Page 37 of Blood Vows

“He left to work elsewhere in the medical field. No questions were asked,” Marco said.

Elena looked between them. “What kind of medical work did he do?”

No one answered, and she exhaled. “Right, mafia stuff.”

Dante almost smiled, but Luca didn’t. “Where’s Vale now?” Luca asked.

Marco typed. “He’s retired.”

“Is he alive?” Luca asked.

“As far as I can tell,” Marco said.

“Find him,” Luca ordered. Marco nodded and started typing again.

Elena looked at the death certificate that Marco had printed out. “If Hale isn’t dead, why fake his death?”

Dante answered. “To disappear.”

“From whom?” she asked.

“That’s the question,” Luca said. Something about the answer chilled her, because her father had talked about getting out. Hale disappeared after he died, and then Hale supposedly died too. Maybe they hadn’t been partners. Maybe they had been running from the same thing.

Elena looked at Marco. “You said Hale’s death was eighteen months ago.”

“Yes,” he said.

“And I got the card six months ago,” she said.

“Which means either he’s alive⁠—"

“Or someone wants me to think he is,” she finished for Marco.

Dante looked at her. “Exactly.” She hated how easily she was starting to understand his world. Maybe she’d always understood more than she wanted to admit.

Luca looked toward Dante. “Go get the card.”

“We will,” Dante said.

“And don’t take unnecessary risks,” Luca ordered. Dante nodded, and Elena snorted. Everyone looked at her.

“What?” Luca asked.

“You’re telling him not to take unnecessary risks?” she said.

Luca’s expression remained completely serious. “Yes.”

She looked at Dante and then back at Luca. “Does that usually work?”

“No,” Luca admitted.

Dante muttered, “Can we go now?” Isabella laughed, and for one brief moment, everything felt almost normal. They were just family sitting around a table, teasing and having coffee together. Then Elena remembered there were seven fraudulent accounts in her name and people carving messages into dead bodies. Normal was gone. Hell, maybe it had never existed.

Her apartment building looked different in daylight—worse, somehow. Crime felt like it belonged to darkness. Seeing yellow police tape near the back entrance under the pale morning sun made everything too real.

Dante sat beside her in the SUV. “You ready?”

“No.” He quietly looked her over, and she looked back at him. “I expected some macho speech about not being scared.”